ILLUSIONS OF ESCAPE

A soldier leaves Vietnam and comes home, but he doesn’t get the peaceful rest he deserves.

In February 1966 Marine Nick Phillips leaves Vietnam to return home to the bars and beaches on Martha’s Vineyard. He thought he’d escaped darkness and violence when he left Vietnam, but he gradually learns life on the Vineyard has changed. Growing up, Nick lived in the shadow of his father’s heroic death in World War II; Jack Phillips had jumped out of a taxiing plane to shoot Nazis trying to stop the crew from taking off. Now, having lost his father, Nick is also traumatized by the loss of his best friend, Sam, who died in an explosion in Vietnam. The former Marine grows close to his best friend’s mother as they mourn together, and a connection sparks between them. Joan suffered her own trauma while her son was in Vietnam, and as Nick becomes more involved with her, he learns she’s much more than the beautiful, kind woman he’s always known her to be. Nick also realizes that his formerly safe, neighborly hometown could be harboring a major drug operation. Another Marine smuggled drugs into the country via Martha’s Vineyard, planting the shipment on Nick. Apparently, someone is trying to set him up, and now the FBI is investigating. As Nick looks for answers, he discovers who is at the heart of the operation: a dapper, devious man. Nick will need to rely on his skills as a soldier and his old friends to survive a completely different kind of war. Myerson has written an intriguing plot, interweaving the mob and drug running. At times, the villains feel one dimensional, but the leads are complicated and believable. Told in straightforward prose (“I was beginning to believe that there was no escaping Vietnam and everything it represented, a kind of depraved world”), this is an affecting story about the inescapability of the past.

A high-stakes, noirish historical thriller with a strong lead.